After four years of the COVID-19 outbreak causing school closures and disrupting child care, the CDC now advises parents to handle the virus similarly to other respiratory illnesses.

Mandatory periods of isolation and mask-wearing are no longer required. However, it remains to be seen if schools and child care centers will comply.

If you’ve lost count: Prior to Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that all Americans, including students, were required to quarantine for five days if they tested positive for COVID-19, followed by wearing masks for a designated amount of time.

The CDC has announced that children can resume attending school once their symptoms have improved and they have been fever-free for 24 hours without using medication. Although not mandatory, students are advised to wear masks upon their return.

However, there is no guarantee that this change will impact the actions of individual schools in regard to advising parents on what to do when their children become ill. The adherence of schools and child care providers to CDC guidelines is inconsistent and they often defer to local authorities for final decisions. Additionally, factors like minimizing absences may also factor into the decisions made by a state or district.

The outcome may vary widely between states and districts, causing confusion for parents who have been greatly affected by the virus for an extended period of time.

During the 2021-2022 academic year, the majority of states did not adhere to the CDC’s recommended protocol of wearing masks in classrooms. In February of 2022, when the CDC relaxed their guidelines, certain states, such as Massachusetts, also loosened their regulations. However, California continued to enforce a mask mandate in schools.

In the realm of child care, certain providers have implemented stricter measures for testing and isolating individuals compared to the recommendations from the CDC. These measures have varied from attempts to avoid outbreaks to ensuring the well-being of staff both for their own safety and to maintain the operation of the day care facility.

Certain states adopted less strict protocols before the CDC. Most recently, California and Oregon reversed their COVID-19 quarantine mandates, prompting numerous regions to do the same.

California has implemented a strategy to reduce school absences and combat the widespread issue of chronic absenteeism. This initiative encourages students to attend school even when they are mildly ill, and allows asymptomatic students who test positive for coronavirus to continue attending school. Many school districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego, have adopted this policy.

However, most districts across the nation have requested that parents keep their children in isolation for at least five days before sending them back to school. Certain districts, such as Boston and Atlanta, have also mandated that students wear masks for an additional five days and inform the school if they test positive for COVID-19.

For working parents, the specific guidelines of a school or day care are extremely important. They may have to miss work if their child is unable to attend school or child care. In October 2023, as the nation dealt with a surge of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza, the number of adults missing work due to child care issues reached 104,000, the highest it has been in the past ten years. However, this number has since decreased, with only 41,000 adults missing work last month due to child care problems, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to Melissa Colagrosso, her child care facility in West Virginia implemented new COVID guidelines around a year ago. However, they have now reverted to the standard procedure for other illnesses, where a child must be symptom-free, particularly from a fever, for a minimum of 24 hours before resuming attendance at the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

Regarding children who are asymptomatic but test positive for COVID-19, Colagrasso stated that most parents are no longer testing their children unless they show symptoms. Therefore, she has not faced this dilemma.

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